Long the Vigil
by maryh10000
Summary: He'd made his alliances, bided his time. This was supposed to be for Royai day but turned out being more about Grumman.


**Long the Vigil**

_Long the vigil, long the wait, in this world half-lit._

At one point, Lt General Grumman had been on a clear track to Fuhrer. He'd made his alliances, bided his time. Then for some reason he'd been sent away from Central to East HQ. Now he had a rebellion to deal with.

There was both advantage and disadvantage in drawing the soldiers to put down the Ishval Rebellion from the Eastern countryside. They were the people most likely to have suffered loss at the hand of an Ishvalan warrior, but they were also most likely to actually know and have befriended an Ishvalan.

Grumman was shrewd. He chose people who had Ishvalan ties but had also suffered personally at Ishvalan hands. People who'd suffered enough to want to end the rebellion enough to kill for it, but not so much that they wanted to totally destroy the enemy. After all, once the Rebellion was put down, there was still a peace to be kept. And dead people don't pay bribes or do favors.

_Long the wait, in this world half-lit, long the vigil._

Grumman couldn't believe his luck when he saw the cadets in basic training. He was the one who'd sent Arber to train in the east instead of the north, where they usually sent Ishvalan enlistees and Academy cadets. At first, it had looked like a mistake. Most of the cadets tolerated him, which he had expected, and some of them were trying to make his life hell, which he had also expected. That Arbor was holding up fine was also expected. What he'd been waiting for, though, was the third group to show itself - the ones who would befriend the Ishvalan.

He'd really expected the friends to be Easterners themselves, so he was surprised when they turned out to be two Central City boys. More surprising, one was the boy his granddaughter had fallen for. He hadn't thought much of the boy - a vain flirt and a bloody alchemist like the negligent fool her mother had married. He wouldn't have thought the boy would risk his popularity by taking up with Arber. He should have known. Riza was much too steady to fall for someone who was really as shallow as Mustang had seemed.

_Long the vigil._

After thirty years, it was the end of his career. As soon as he read Order 3066, he knew he'd have to pull in every favor anyone had ever owed him to stay in the military at all, let alone advance any further.

He'd thought, two or three times, that he'd solved the Ishval problem. But now he had Falman's report in one hand and no more than a month later, the Fuhrer's new order. The Fuhrer didn't want the Ishvalan problem solved. He wanted the Ishvalans dead.

Nothing left to do now but damage control. Riza was in her fourth year at the Academy. It was critical to get her transferred elsewhere for her combat training.

_In this world half-lit._

He went over the deep end a bit when she'd been sent to Ishval after all. The only thing that consoled him was that he didn't think it was an attempt to get at him. He'd been good at covering his tracks so that no one knew she was his granddaughter. Someone who was skilled and determined and thought to look into it would have been able to find out, but they'd have to suspect something first and no one did. In the end, it was her sharpshooting skill that had been her downfall.

He'd always been considered eccentric but he didn't think even he would have done it if he hadn't already been driven a bit mad. Bradley had been trying to play both sides at once: to the people who hated the Ishvalans, he said that extermination meant exactly that. To the vast majority, he said he meant only that all means were to be taken to bring the Ishvalans under control. He didn't allow the release of the full text to the public newspapers, allowing it only to be summarized.

So Grumman had sent a copy of Executive Order 3066 to the public papers, to Drachma, to Aerugo and to Creta. His defense was that that was the way it was usually done with Executive Orders, which was actually true. In the end, the Fuhrer had retained enough doubt to keep from having him executed for treason. But Bradley didn't trust him enough to let him leave the military, let alone the country. From now on, Grumman knew he would be carefully watched.

His eccentricity began to become the stuff of legends.

_Long the wait_

It was hell when the Order 3066 veterans started coming back. Grumman didn't know which was worse - the ones who seemed broken by what they'd been forced to do or the ones who seemed to have no problem at all. He hadn't been able to see Riza yet because there was no excuse for him to take an interest in her, especially since she was assigned to Central. He was the crazy old general who bad-mouthed the handling of the Ishval problem - otherwise, he would have had the excuse of wanting to talk to the Hawk's Eye, the young woman who was one of the heroes of Ishval.

He'd been disappointed in Mustang. The boy should have figured out some way to get out of there or disobey, but instead, he'd been as efficient as Kimblee. What if Riza still wanted him? But when Mustang reported to him at Eastern HQ, he saw the fire in his eyes. Some of them wanted to get away, some of them saw nothing wrong in the first place. This one was burning with something else.

_In this world half-lit, long the vigil, long the wait._

They were both assigned to Eastern HQ now, where he could keep an eye on them. His vigil was not over yet.


End file.
